


Single Malt Memories

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Irresponsible use of alcohol, Mutual Masturbation, PWP, Shameless Smut, Skype
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>London is cold, getting colder, and Emily Prentiss isn't ashamed to admit that she's lonely. She's finding that she's not the only one who feels that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Single Malt Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greeneyedconstellations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeneyedconstellations/gifts).



> It’s been one of those days. Emily Prentiss slams the door of her flat behind her, just because she can, and considers that the Tube may have been invented purely to be a source of aggravation in her life. Her coat ends up pooled on the floor when she throws it unceremoniously against the rack, her shoes kicked into an untidy pile against the side of her couch, and she is _done_ with today.

Padding into the kitchen, she tugs open the oft-ignored cupboard above her humming fridge and taps her fingers thoughtfully on the dusty wood, skimming the contents. The hinge on the cupboard complains as she swings it absently, the tiles cold through her socks and making her toes curl upwards away from the chill. Outside, London is settling loudly into the freezing night, the old building groaning and clattering around her as the heating kicks in and the double-glazed windows with their heavy drapes push out the icy winds. Even after a year here, she still hasn’t adapted to just how swiftly and immovably the cold sets in.

The echo only serves to illustrate the emptiness of the flat around her, setting a sharp sting of something biting working its way down her throat to her belly. She grabs a bottle, feeling the glass slip under her fingers before shoving it back irritably. Every bottle, every brand: every single one of them laced with memories and giving that stinging feeling ammunition to use against her.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and closes her eyes, neck aching from craning back. It shouldn’t be so hard to choose. It’s a fucking drink. That’s all it is.

But she’s frozen.

There’s a bottle of Plymouth gin, earthy and fruity and deceptively hard-hitting, and she sucks in a sharp breath at the memory of JJ’s wicked grin as she’d ordered them pink gins on her hen’s night, one drink smoothly rolling into another until everything had gone hazy. There’s bottle of ouzo to the left of that that Reid had shyly handed to her the Christmas before she’d left, commenting quietly that maybe she’d had it during her teenage years in Greece. She’d wanted to tease him about how awkward he’d looked about discussing her wilder years, but he’d been so out of his element that instead she’d showed him how to drink it and gotten him thoroughly plastered on the stuff. The bottle is a quarter full, and she knows she won’t finish it unless she’s with him. He’s meticulously entwined with her memory of it now. There’s a bottle of Glenlivet in there, unopened and old and probably really expensive, and she just knows if she ever does open it all she’ll be able to think about is Rossi. Rossi and his ridiculously fucking expensive taste in scotch, his odd generosity with gifts, and the smug superiority that not only oozes from his smile but also from the ever-so-classy label across the front of the amber liquid.

She can’t deal with smug right now, or with missing him, so she pushes it behind the ouzo and smiles at the battered and painfully cheap rum bottle Garcia had pressed on her one night when Prentiss was slipping out of her house after a daiquiri night that had quickly turned into a ‘gossip about the lads’ night. The bottle had been sticky with Garcia’s fingers from the candy they’d been eating—was probably still sticky with traces of it—the lid done crookedly and listing drunkenly to the side. Garcia’s breath had smelt of apples when she’d brushed her lips against Emily’s cheek.

Emily shoves the memories away and grabs the closest single malt, still capped and clean of recollections. She’d brought it for herself in the London airport. Something niggles in the back of her mind but she ignores it, twisting the cap until it cracks open under her fingers and reaching with her other hand for a glass.

Ice. Whiskey. There’s an open bottle of Coke in the fridge she needs to drink before it flattens, so she grabs that too. There’s probably more whiskey in the glass than Coke, but that’s fine. She doesn’t have work tomorrow, has nowhere to be tonight, and the alcohol burns nicely on the way down and leaves her feeling warm and ready to shake the tension of the day from her body.

The couch welcomes her and she sinks into it, placing the bottle down with a _clunk_ on the coffee table next to her laptop and laying back with her head on the armrest, peering up thoughtfully though the bottom of her glass when she holds it aloft. It fractures light, reflecting from the ice and shooting glints of amber through the dark Coke, and she thinks of Reid again. Takes another mouthful and welcomes the burn. Another one and the glass is empty, and Rossi would shoot her if he saw her gulping it like this. _Alcohol should be savoured,_ complains his voice, and she mutters, “Fuck off,” because damned if he’s going to lecture her from DC.

But she’s warmer now, loose-limbed and eyes sleepy, so the glass joins the bottle on the table, ice clinking, and she stretches languidly and considers turning the laptop towards her and hitting the power button. She wonders what time it is in DC. She wonders if _he’s_ in DC.

She wonders why she’s thinking about him and pushes the thoughts roughly away, rolling over and tapping the button. The laptop powers on with a jingle and she amuses herself by clicking aimlessly around the internet, blankly tapping through pictures of kittens in party hats, when the speakers hum again. A small box in the corner. **A. Hotchner is online.**

It always gets a giggle. Out of all of her team, Hotch is the most at home on Skype. Reid she’d never managed to get to make an account, instead trading letters with him on a painfully precise schedule. Every Tuesday, she’d go downstairs and find another bulging envelope filled with his often excited, sometimes pensive, rarely miserable scrawl. He was never so blatant about his emotions—but she could read between the lines, and she did.

She replied to every one of them.

JJ would video call her when their time zones allowed it but it was difficult with work and Henry and instant messaging through the scrabble program was easier. Morgan preferred to call. Rossi sent emails from his work address, and they were borderline inappropriately flippant considering every one of them would pass through the FBI’s filters—and Garcia’s. She knew he had a personal email, she responded to it. She also knew he was doing it to be cheeky, and loved him for it.

And somehow, somehow, texting wasn’t right for Hotch and neither was Scrabble or hand written missives, and their calls were taut with everything unsaid. He was a difficult man to read even in person, and she needed verbal and visual cues to know how to step around him. Around their fifth video call, still related to work at that point, was when she’d asked him how he’d been— _him_ , not the team or Jack or the work—and to her surprise, he’d answered.

The next call had only been marginally about work, and he’d instigated it.

The next time led to her in DC helping them hunt a serial killer, and it also led to him in her hotel room with his head between her thighs, the taste of her thick on his lips, and her legs on his shoulders as he let him show her how careful he could be. After that, they didn’t bother with pretence. But it was just sex. Always just sex.

The alcohol burns and she pours another. Her third? Maybe. Straight, because she’s left the Coke behind. It’s going to her head, and her cunt, helped along by the thoughts of Hotch and how he looks when he makes her come with just his tongue or fingers or, eventually and only once, his cock. They’d both been drunk, dark and hot in the backseat of his car like frantic teenagers, and the only thing she regrets about it now is that her memories of it are hazy and hard to recall when she needs them.

Like now.

On a whim, she brings up the Skype window and hits _call_. It’s risky. She likes risky.

She’s always been reckless.

He answers before she has time to pour another drink.

He looks tired. He always looks tired when she sees him now. The weight of his years leans heavily on his face, turning his mouth turn down at the resting position rather than straight like she’s used to. It makes her ache for the years before Foyet, when his smile was a little quicker, a little wickeder. He looks tired, but he smiles anyway when he sees her.

“Prentiss,” he greets her, and his voice is rough. He shifts and she realizes he’s sitting on his bed. He’s still in his shirt and tie and maybe that’s why she didn’t immediately recognise the relaxed atmosphere. “To what do I owe the honour?”

She’s a little drunk and, unlike him, still a lot wicked, and maybe that’s what teases the words from her mouth. He’s tired and clearly ready for bed (what time is it over there?), but she still says, “Do I need a reason to call an old friend?”

He laughs, and softens. She watches him relax into the conversation. There’s a glass in his free hand, almost empty, and she’s not the only one drinking. He leans out of frame and she hears the _cli-think_ of it hitting wood as he puts it down. It tilts the laptop, bringing the bare edge of the bedside cupboard into view. “No reason,” he says. “Always a pleasure. You look tired.”

“So do you,” she retorts, and the smile wobbles. He’s probably thinking about Jack, about a case, about a myriad of things that will bring those tired lines back to his face. She shifts, tightens her legs, feels a hot flush of heat between her hips and across her cheeks. “I was thinking about you.” It’s an admission, and she doesn’t let her gaze dip. All she can see is his chest anyway, unless he lowers the screen, and god fuck, she wants him to.

“Oddly,” he replies slowly, his face carefully blank. “I can say the same.” His eyes dart to his glass on the cupboard, and linger. Then they trace back, so slowly and carefully her breath slows with them.

Now he’s looking at her and his eyes have widened ever so slightly. He’s drinking too; his lips are flushed, and she runs her tongue over her own lips before answering, tasting the sour left-over whisky from her second glass. “Do you do that a lot?” she asks, shifting on her seat and pulling the laptop onto her blanket covered lap, ignoring the sudden kick-jolt of heat in her stomach and groin. “Think about me?”

Silence. His breath rasps. She watches his eyes lock on her face, curious and hungry all at once, and even in the dim lighting, they’re dark and endless and she wants to lose herself in them. The screen bumps as he shifts on the bed, leaning back and lifting a knee to bring her more in line with his gaze. “Yes,” he says finally, and she sees his cheeks flush so very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

The kick-jolt becomes a slick heat that pools and pulses. She knows she’s wet and by the look on his face, he’s not far from suspecting. She tenses her thighs, the laptop bobbing slightly with the movement, and wonders if she can lean back in such a way that he won’t notice her hand slipping down…

“Oh?” she asks instead, and she’s going to do this, she’s going to keep pushing because Emily Prentiss has never known when to back off. “Good things I hope?”

“Of course,” he says. He coughs, turning his gaze to the bed next to him, and she wonders what’s there. A case-file maybe, more likely a dozen. While he’s not looking, she takes the opportunity to take another mouthful of her drink, the ice clattering, and runs a hand over the front of her blouse, leaving the top two buttons undone. It’s warm, the heating having kicked in, and she knows she’s flushed.

There’s a throbbing between her legs that’s insistent and impossible to ignore and she’s thinking of her bed, the vibrator in the third drawer, but mostly she’s thinking of the red on his cheeks and the darkness of his eyes. And some small part of her, a small and vocal part, is adding those two together and coming up with five; a sneaky little voice in the back of her mind murmuring _do you think he’s hard, under that cool exterior? Do you think he wants like you do?_

“Well, that’s good,” she says finally, and tilts the laptop back just enough that when he looks back, he’s only able to see her head and maybe her shoulders. Not her arm. Not her hand.

_Do you think he’s thinking of fucking you?_ The voice continues, and she slides her hand down her stomach, eyes locked on the profile of his face during the oddly comfortable silence between them, finding the waistband of her pants. Finding the button. Undoing it deftly to allow her hand to slide in and under, threading through neatly trimmed curls to cup around herself, savouring the heat and the _illicitness_ of it.

“I bought you that whiskey,” she says, noting the bottle that’s resting on the bedside cupboard. “I remember now. Duty free from London airport. I’m drinking my own bottle now.”

He chuckles, the sound deep and rich, and she feels the warmth under her fingers grow. She resists rocking into that, not quite ready to commit to fucking herself under his gaze. Not yet. “You did. Said you saw it and were reminded of me. I was both flattered, and concerned.”

“See,” she teases, and he’s still smiling and _fuck_ she can see the barest hint of the dimple at the corner of his mouth, his eyes soft, and she’s gone. The alcohol is hitting her, going to her head, and she needs to… “I do think of you. Often.” A single finger trailing along herself to press against her clit and the next words are sharp and edged with a gasp. “More than you know.”

The mic crackles as he sucks in a startled breath and she can’t look at him, her eyes averted and body thrumming with _what are you doing stop doing this do it more look at him don’t stop._ “Emily,” he just about groans, and her body burns with the _wrecked_ tone of his voice. “We… can’t.”

He says we can’t, but when she chances a look at him under lowered eyelashes, he’s looking down and she can’t see where his hands are. She thinks of him palming himself, through his sensibly coloured pants maybe, his shirt and tie still immaculate, and slips her finger lower, lower, sliding it into herself. She thinks of him hard and throbbing, thinking of her, and adds another finger. It’s not enough.

“Why not?” she says instead of _okay,_ and now he looks at her, his eyes a challenge. “We’ve done more.”

“Because we’re drunk,” he says firmly, and she lets her mouth fall open in a broken hiss as another finger presses into the wet tightness between her legs. He swallows, audibly. “Because we’re lonely,” he adds, and she smiles tightly because that’s true. “And because,” he pauses and she sees his eyelids flicker, losing track of himself. It takes a second for her brain to catch up but it does because he shifts very minutely and she knows that look. “Because I’m not in the position to be objective.”

She’s not thinking about him palming himself through his pants anymore, but instead she’s imagining him pulling his cock out of his pants just under her line of sight and stroking himself slowly, his eyes locked on her face, imagines the bead of pre-come on the tip under his thumb as he spreads it down his length. “Don’t,” she stammers, losing the thread of her thought as she clenches greedily around her fingers, the throbbing spreading through her body until she’s thrumming with it. “Don’t stop. Please don’t.”

Don’t stop because she’s beyond wanting to stop, and she’s not being remotely subtle about where her fingers are anymore, and he licks his lips, once, twice, and then makes a broken kind of moan. “Christ,” he says finally, and she closes her eyes and focuses on moving her fingers, spreading them wider inside herself to pretend they’re what she really wants, what she _needs_. “You’re already… are you?”

He’s tentative and awkward but her body is tight with tension and she knows he can see it. “Yes.”

“Emily.” That’s his command voice. “Look at me.” She does. His eyes are hungry, he’s leaning forward, and there’s no trace of tentativeness on his features anymore. “I want you looking at me when you come.”

Those words fall from his lips like any other, like the uncountable numbers she’s heard him utter before, but their effect is electric. She chokes back his name, presses her thumb against her clit, and slides her other hand up her shirt to glide across the hard ridge of her nipple under the silk of her bra, the laptop wobbling tenuously from its precarious perch between her knees and the back of the couch. It’s the work of a second to wiggle out of her pants, kicking them off, and she thinks she slides her underwear off too with her free hand but it’s getting hard to focus on the details. The laptop rocks with her movements, and she steadies it once she’s bare from the waist down and still so fucking wanting.

“Aaron,” she gasps, and he hums and leans closer, dark eyes hooded and locked on her face. “I want…” It breaks off into a stuttered hiss as her hips roll up and her fingers glide within her. “Join me.”

He chuckles huskily, voice edged with hunger and a bite of something she doesn’t recognise. “I have.” He lets those words sink in and she feels her eyes widen as she stares at the screen, recognising the flush to his face, the slight movement of the muscles of his chest, and longing for the laptop to shift, just a little, just a bit. “I’ve been hard since you admitted to thinking about me.”

_Ohgodohgodohgod_. She cries out, sharp and shocked all once, her hand almost still as she rocks her hips onto her fingers twice, her rhythm stuttering, slowing. She’s beyond caring when the laptop tilts slightly more. She hears him groan, hears him talking, the words impossible to discern through the haze of thinking of his hand around his cock, his hard cock, him fucking his own fist while thinking of fucking her.

“Emily,” he says and she shakes her head, mouth too dry to form words, and she can feel herself clenching around her fingers, a coiling, pulsing heat building between her hips, and she’s seconds from coming and only keeping herself from it from sheer willpower. She doesn’t want this to end, this moment between them, and it teeters on the edge of doing so, held back only by her shallow breaths. “I can see you, _oh fuck_ , I can see you, love. You’re stunning. So stunning.” She closes her eyes, feeling a knife-edged smile slipping onto her face at the shocked distraction in his voice. She’s not the only one coming apart. “How many?” The voice that was shocked has turned wicked, and she chokes back an inopportune giggle at the unexpected forwardness because _holy fuck that’s hot._

It’s hard to talk and hold herself on the brink but she manages it with a word that’s almost a whisper. “Three.”

“Oh fuck. _Fuck_.” When she opens her eyes, his are closed and his head is tilted away slightly, revealing a flush of pink on his throat that she knows continues down under his neatly ironed collar and sensibly knotted tie. She wants to reach through and drag him through the screen by that tie, tasting his arousal on his lips and feeling for herself just how hard and wanting he is. She doesn’t break her gaze when he looks back at the screen, bottom pink from where his teeth had been nipping at it, and she slowly, deliciously, draws her hand out and up with a moan that burns. His eyes widen, dark and endless. “You’re so wet,” he breathes, staring at her exposed fingers, cool in the air and visibly slick. “So wet. Keep going. Please. Slowly.”

She does. Slowly. One, and she steadies the laptop on the armrest and arches her spine so he can count. Two. Slowly. If she focuses, she can hear his breath quickening, the rustle of fabric, the soft, steady rasp of skin against skin as he stares at her cunt and imagines the fingers as his. Three, and she whispers his name. “Like this?” she asks, not looking at him, just savouring. “Is this how you’d do it, Aaron?”

“No,” is the sharp response, and there’s a predatory appetite in it and a stuttering catch that means he’s close, so painfully close, and she hopes he’ll let her watch. “Add another.”

A pause. She does look at him now, raising an eyebrow. _Cocky little shit._ “Feeling insecure?” she teases, and brings her pinky close, mocking, closer. Thumb over her clit but she doesn’t press down because if she does, this is it. The end is already taunting, the climax she’d staved off earlier building like a succession of small charges in the base of her spine, and sending her mind reeling. “Don’t want me getting a… small impression of you?”

He smiles and it’s a promise and a taunt, and shifts the laptop down, down, and _oh_. She presses a fourth finger in, delighting in the stretch, and watches him as his hips rock steadily up, his hand—the hand she’d shaken, touched, _known_ —moving smoothly along the shaft of his stiff cock. And he’s right, four is more accurate, and she’s beyond caring now, hand losing its rhythm as her hips falter, pressure building and it’s all too easy to imagine him pressing inside her, filling her, the burn and the stretch as he works his way deeper and deeper into her body.

“ _Now_ it’s like I’d do it,” he purrs, his voice velvet and heat, and she’s coming, slowly and irrevocably. “When I fuck you, you’ll feel it Emily. Just like that. Just like you are now, _fuck_. Emily, _Emily;_ I want to be inside you—I’d be so good inside you right now, _so good_. Feeling you come.”

Her eyes are closed, closed so tightly she can see lights dancing on the lids, but she stills chokes out a reply. “Making me come.”

The groan she gets in return is guttural and from deep in his chest, a cross between a noise and a _yes_. When she opens her eyes in the hazy, boneless afterglow of her body coming down, his fist is moving without rhyme or rhythm, his breathing is ragged. He’s so close she can see the wet slide of pre-come gliding over his skin from his frantic movements. “So good,” she repeats, pushing him closer and watching his shoulders shake. “So good, Aaron, can you feel it? I can feel it. Me tightening around you and you coming inside me, so hot and wet and deep.” It’s filthy and he’s filthy and neither of them care anymore as his fist stutters, stalls, and he finally comes openly and vividly for her to memorise; watching greedily as the white splashes of come from the end of his cock mark his hand and the end of his untucked shirt and label plainly what she’s done to him here, how she’s pulled him apart.

The silence that follows isn’t awkward and it’s broken only by the ragged sound of his breathing as he lays back on the bed and quietly regains the dignity that he still somehow possesses with his cock hanging out from his pants and his shirt dishevelled. The ice in her glass is melted when she reaches for it and takes a shaky sip, the alcohol watered down—probably for the best—and her fingers leave a grimy mark on the glass that she grimaces at and looks about for a tissue for both that and the slick mess still between her thighs.

“Guess this is the part where we make excuses not to cuddle and you promise to call but never do?” she jokes, finding the tissues and, interestingly, the panties she had no memory of kicking off. The laptop mic crackles as he sits up on the bed and stares intently at her.

“I always call when I promise,” he says, and she believes him. The relaxed air to him is gone, and she’s sorry because it was rare and she’d never seen it quite so plainly written on his features before, replaced by sadness and a tinge of something she recognises from when she looks in her own mirror. He bears his loneliness as keenly as she does. “Emily, I…”

“It’s just sex, Aaron,” she cuts in quickly, because she had been drunk and horny and yes, so fucking lonely it hurt, but she didn’t want him to be obligated to apologise. “It’s not the first time between us—” _I hope it won’t be the last_. “—And you don’t need to feel regret for this. I don’t.”

His gaze is impossible to discern.

“I was going to ask,” he says finally, and smiles. The relaxation is back, the warm, well-fucked gaze to his eyes, and she can’t help but smile back at him despite the exhaustion that’s suddenly clawing for attention through the sleepy contentment of her orgasm. “If you’re free two weekends from now… We’re off active duty. I could fly to you. We could…”

She takes over. “Cuddle and watch shit movies? That sounds an awful lot like a date, Aaron Hotchner.”

A careless shrug that sits oddly on his body and she’s almost glad when it’s over. If she focuses on his (mostly) neat shirt and his tie, she can pretend this is normal and nothing is changing between them at this moment. “Or we could have… copious amounts of irresponsible sex and eat nothing but breakfast for most of the weekend,” he suggests, and it sounds… perfectly tempting. And dangerous.

She’s always been reckless. She takes another sip of the whiskey she brought while thinking of him.

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
